The invention concerns a hand-held planing tool having a drive shaft driven by an electric motor to rotate a bladed planer head.
The planer head rotates in a cylindrical planing chamber which is provided in a housing and is open in the downward direction. The downward opening is bordered in a direction transverse to the feed direction by (i) the rear edge of a feed plate, the latter being adjustable in height, and (ii) the front edge of the discharge plate. The axis of the planer head is arranged in a fixed position with respect to a bottom surface of the tool.
Known manual planing tools of this type have been capable heretofore of planar cutting only. The planer base of the discharge table or the discharge plate, respectively, is aligned tangentially with the circle of rotation of the plane cutter, so that essentially only planar work or fitting work on window frames or the planing of doors or the like, are possible. This is in essence also true for special designs of planing tools, such as for example, a rough plane, the base of which, while it has a certain profile, is again essentially parallel to the rotating circle of the cutter, whereby merely certain points of the shaping cutter are penetrating to a depth of approximately 1 mm into the surface to be processed, in order to obtain a rustic appearance. In the case of the so-called barrel plane the rear base is again aligned with the circle of rotation of the planer cutter, wherein, however, the feed table and the discharge table are in the form of curved guide surfaces, the radii of curvature whereof are adjustable.
In the known planing tools the cylindrical chamber for the planer head is arranged and laid out so that it corresponds approximately to the diameter of the planer head and its slightly protruding cutter baldes, with the axis of the chamber being located so that its lower limit extends into a narrow slit between the chipbreaking rear edge of the feed table and the front edge of the discharge table, the planer base whereof is tangential to the diameter of the rotating circle of the planer cutter. The narrow, slit-like orifice is provided for safety reasons so that the hands of an operator cannot be seized accidentally by the rotating planer head and its cutting blades. In view of this layout of conventional manual planer tools, profile shaping is not possible, as it is not feasible to let a substantial cutter circumference extend from the orifice in the downward direction. For the shaping of moldings or the surface of beams or the like, therefore stationary milling machines are used, which are expensive. Even though planer tools for the shaping of profiles are known (U.S. Pat. No. 1,206,461), straight line guidance can be obtained with them by using separate lateral guides only. The guidance of the profile produced itself is not possible and not intended.
It is an object of the invention to provide a manual planer tool of the above-mentioned type so that profile shaping work is possible, whereby molding shapes may be produced by do-it-yourself workers or in mobile applications on construction sites or the like.